Red Hand Day 2023

Today, 12th February is ‘Red Hand Day’, the international awareness day that aims to remind the international community to strengthen efforts to end the recruitment and use of children in armed conflicts. 

Although efforts to stop children from being recruited and used by armed actors remain high in the international community’s agenda, children around the world continue to be recruited and used by armed actors. Many of them remain unidentified and unreported, particularly girls. 

More needs to be done to prevent child recruitment and to provide reintegration and protection support to those boys and girls who have been released following their recruitment and use by armed actors. 

In recent years, considerable progress has been made in the legal and policy frameworks protecting children associated with armed actors. This progress has gone alongside the need of field practitioners to have tools and guidance to support the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes to prevent and respond to child recruitment. 

Since its establishment in 2020, the CAAFAG Task Force of the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, with the support of its members and of key donors, has been leading on the development of tools and guidance to design and implement programmes for the prevention, release, and reintegration of CAAFAG.

These include:

• CAAFAG Programme Development Toolkit (2022)
• Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in CAAFAG Programmes (2022)
• MOOC: Programme Design for Children Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups (2022) 
• Operational Guidance: Negotiating and Implementing Handover Protocols for the Transfer of CAAFAG (2022)
• Growing Strong Together: A Parenting Programme to Support the Reintegration of Children and Prevent their Recruitment (2021)
• Technical Note on Girls Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups (2020)

Other recent resources on CAAFAG include the Paris Principles Handbook, published in December 2022.

Today, the CAAFAG Task Force and its members join this global commemoration and ask for: 

• Stronger international action to end the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict and to fully implement the Paris Commitments and Principles on Children Associated with Armed Forces and Armed Groups 
• Enhanced protection for children living in situations of armed conflict and, at risk of recruitment and use by armed actors